1. Reply to this post with 'Icons!', and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will - allegedly - create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

And here are the five that evil_authoress picked for me! ( Behind the cut. )

As an aside... I think I must be going senile in my old age, because I swear swear swear that I remember doing this same meme once before, possibly months ago. But I searched back through my journal using my own tags, and I absolutely couldn't find the post. Maybe I just hallucinated doing it...? I distinctly remember being asked to write about this icon, and explaining that it was a birthday present from poisonangel7, and about how awesome Anissina is. Aaaah, this is driving me crazy! Maybe I accidentally deleted the relevant post, somehow...?

Edit: Never mind, I found it! My eyes must have skipped over it several times when I was searching. Derrrrr.

( Behind the cut: Eureka Seven, Fate/Unlimited Codes, Fullmetal Alchemist, Kyou Kara Maou, Shakugan no Shana, Soul Eater, and PUPPIES! )

Hmmm, I think that's it for tonight's scanspam. For the record, I was going to go the extra mile and scan this piece of terrible beauty for y'all to enjoy...But then I got tired. And the darn poster is too wrinkly to make a decent scan of anyway.

Comment to this entry and I will pick a character you know. Then you answer the same questions I have posted.

hauntedreality gave me Conrad from Kyou Kara Maou.

( He's Conrad, he's Conrad, he's everyone's favorite guy... )

Are you ready for some holy shit?!?!

( HOLY SHIT!!!! )

I mean, WOW.

Rufus ain't got nothing on this shit.

So, the bonus drama CD that came bundled with the second Kyou Kara Maou sountrack...

Hehe, WOW.

I have to admit, however, I am always annoyed when major plot revelations like this are confined to tie-in media. I mean, if I'm watching the anime series, then I'm watching the anime series. I shouldn't have to buy all of the artbooks and soundtracks and other related media in order to piece together a huge freakin' part of the plot. I prefer it when tie-in media enhances the experience of the watching/reading the primary source, so to speak, but not when it becomes essential to understanding the primary source. Side note: Another reason why the Marvel/DC model of super crossover events annoys me, and that's also the major annoyance that I had with the Star Wars prequels. But that's a rant for another time.

On the other hand, though... squeeeeeeeeeeeee! ( Vague spoiler! )

Edit: As long as we're talking about plot bombs, try this one on for size: Code Geass R2 episode 5. Which perfectly distills everything that I love about this series, namely, it's unabashed awfulness. Money quotes from Jason:

Consider: this episode’s climax involved C.C. trapped in a tub of tomatoes (being used to make the world’s largest pizza) with Kallen (in an animal costume) desperately chasing after her. Shirley (dressed up in a waitress / swimsuit combo that the Umisho girls gawked at) is chasing Kallen, and the giant tub of tomatoes is being transported by a mecha piloted the third most awesome knight of Britannia (who apparently has nothing else better to do with his time). Meanwhile, the seventh most awesome knight of Britannia is chasing after a cat that almost got run over by said mecha. And I haven’t even gotten to the star of this show, because he ran out of breath and is on the verge of collapsing, his “brother” who has basically pledged to kill for the sake of their love, and mobile suit pilot turned housewife turned Duke turned teacher turned pin up model. And all of that connects back to Japan’s fight for independence from America.

Whew.

Code Geass R2 is awesome.

[...]

I’ve been thinking about the next level after train wreck. Code Geass R2 is definitely pushing that envelope. When one character wearing a ridiculous costume trips and falls because a giant pizza baking contest got screwed up and is seen by another character wearing a bikini and fishnets is considered a major plot point, it’s almost beyond train wreck status. Generally, a plot train wreck is something disastrous yet inevitable or awful yet fascinating. Maybe an earthquake? The G.W. Bush presidency?

I should stop myself before I quote Jason's entire entry.

Cherry blossoms are blooming, school is starting, and new TV shows are on TV. Unfortunately there's not much that piques my interest this year. The only shows that I will definitely be watching are Kyou Kara Maou's third season, because it will be good, and Code Geass's second season, because it will be awesomely bad.

Code Geass, by the way, is eminently useful as a case study of how NOT to write an epic science fiction story about a dysfunctional royal family that tears itself apart and destroys the world in an apocalyptic civil war. (*cough*) So that's one reason why I can justify continuing to watch it. Also, pizza-tossing giant roller-skating robots piloted by bunny girls. That, too.

Other than that, I'm looking forward to Library Wars, because it looks really fun and geeky. It's basically Read or Die, but played straight. Er, if that makes any sense. Anyway, it's about a bunch of librarians that Save the World. But not in ridiculous over-the-top ways like the heroes of Read or Die. More like, in practical ways: i.e., with tanks.

Wagaya no Oinarisama, about a genderbending fox spirit, looks mildly interesting. Soul Eater looks like one of those rare shounen series with a kickass heroine, and coming straight out of a fantastic season of Shakugan no Shana I am definitely in the mood for a kickass heroine, so we'll see. Allison and Lilia looks to deliver in that respect, too - with a dashing lady fighter pilot and her treasure-hunting daughter - but the character designs look kind of bland.

Tsubasa is on hiatus this week. AGAIN.

Well, now where am I going to get my weekly dose of mindless entertainment?

Ah, kkm_rewatch provides.

(Yeah, I'd say that the first twenty or so episodes of Kyou Kara Maou are fairly mindless, but still entertaining. And the series turns a corner pretty soon after that.)

The Suzumiya Haruhi PSP game is really, really distracting. I might actually have the attention span to play this one all the way through to the end.

Oh, anyway. Meme time!

1. Leave me a casual comment of no particular significance, like a lyric to your favorite song.
2. I will respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. Update your lj with the answers to these questions.
4. Include this explanation and offer to ask others in your own post.
5. When others respond with a desultory comment, you will ask them five questions.

Asked by poisonangel7: ( Behind the cut. )

Blah blah blah, there's a lot of exciting news coming out of the New York Anime Festival. Code Geass on Adult Swim, so now you can ALL enjoy the trainwreck of trainwrecks! Kyou Kara Maou manga licensed, but will we ever see the novels, and will anybody rescue the anime from the black hole created by Geneon's collapse?

But the one thing that really caught my eye was this: An X-Men shoujo manga. No, seriously. Money quote:

The first, X-Men, was described as a shōjo title — "X-Men meets Fruits Basket or Ouran High School Host Club" according to one panelist — features Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning as an all-boys' school, with the only female student being Kitty Pryde. The work will be aimed at a manga audience; while the characters will be based on famous X-Men heroes, the manga will not require any prior knowledge of the original X-Men comics. The manga is scripted by Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman, with art by Indonesia-based artist Anzu.

Okay.

That sounds kind of terrible.

But, I dunno. If they're really going to go all the way and rip off Ouran, I hope they recast Wolverine as Kitty's tranvestite mother. I mean, if you're going to make a terrible manga, you gotta make a really terrible manga. That's why Code Geass is so good. If it were a bit less awful then it would be merely awful; but it's SO awful that it's actually incredibly entertaining.

ETA: The official press release has more information.

Okay, so Xavier's school is still a school for mutants. Why is it an all-boys school, then? How or why Kitty is enrolled in an all-boys school is not explained. Oh wait, the press release makes it sound kind of like Xavier's school just happens to have an entirely male student body, and Kitty just happens to be the first girl enrolled. (Is it because she's the first girl mutant ever discovered?) Eh, it's really hard to tell from the press release. So Kitty gets caught in a social war between the popular kids (the Hellfire Club, led by Pyro, apparently) and the misfits. And she sides with the misfits. And then the misfits band together and form the X-Men. Hooray!

Sadly, this does not sound anything like Ouran High School Host Club. Mmmmm, needs more male cross-dressing, elaborate tea parties, and lesbian theater productions.

ETA 2: The more I think about this, the more dissappointed I am that Emma Frost hasn't been mentioned so far. Now, we've only got one press release to work from, so that doesn't mean that she won't be in the manga or anything... But if she isn't, what a waste! She would have been perfect as the Queen Bitch Popular Girl who starts out as the heroine's nemesis, turns out to be more complex over time, and then eventually becomes the heroine's reluctant ally.

I don't know how convincing of a shoujo nemesis Pyro can be AU-ed into. Then again, if they keep the detail about him being a dashing romance writer on the side... That will be kind of cool. ;)

ETA 3: The Beat has pictures of the preliminary designs for Wolverine and Jean. They look good! I can't tell how old Jean is supposed to be, though. Is she a student, or an adult?

Qwest has hooked up my internet in the new apartment, yet they have still not sent me my modem... Which is annoying, because I've finished 95% of the huge-arse PDK revamp/re-org/giant update that I wanted to do this weekend, and I have no way to get it online. (Or to validate my coding until it's online...)

My tummy hurts in ways that I cannot explain.

The last few episodes of Kyou Kara Maou! have been ripping my heart out. No pun intended.

I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go home, cook a big meal, and pop in the first few episodes of KKM so I can remember a happier time when horrible, horrible things were not regularly happening to my favorite characters.

Also, I need to buy a cookie sheet, for Valentine's Day-related shenanigans.

So I know that Sailor Stars is finally (finally!) piddling out on R2 DVD, but it took me up until today to save up enough spending money to actually, you know, buy said DVDs. When I logged onto CDJapan, however, I found to my disappointment that the first press editions of most volumes are already sold out. BOO. That means that I don't get the bonus puzzle that comes with most of the DVDs. Thankfully, I reserved a first press copy of volume 6 - that's the one that comes with the artbox - but other than that, I kind of boned myself for waiting this long. I mean, what's the point of shelling out an obscene amount of money for an R2 DVD if I can't even get the collector's bonuses? I mean, the non-first-press DVDs are still the same price but come without the extras, which stinks.

I've never seen an R2 DVD sell out of first-press editions while still in the pre-order phase at CDJapan. So, um, I guess this proves that Sailor Moon is still an obscenely popular fandom in the English-speaking world. Make that an obscenely popular fandom among those of us who have the money and the means to buy DVDs. Make that a super-obscenely popular fandom compared to just about any other fandom that could be buying DVDs off CDJapan. Hello, anime companies, are you paying attention to this?! ADV, I'm looking at you. License Stars, have it do well in North America, and hopefully this will convince you that shoujo can sell, so you'll get Princess Tutu and Pichi Pichi Pitch out of your basement storage and onto the store shelves where they belong... (*cough*)

So, I guess this is a heads-up to those of you on my flist who are intending to buy the Stars DVDs: Hurry. Get them now, before the first press editions are gone. (Unless you've already bought your DVDs, then, well, good for you. Tell me if the puzzles are pretty or not.)

So yes, I spent more money than I intended to today, rushing to pre-order what remaining first-press editions of Stars were left at CDJapan. It's hard when I have a limited budget and so many anime titles on DVD to tempt me. Gankutsuou and Ah! My Goddess are coming out on DVD this month, and I still need to save money to complete Fullmetal Alchemist and Kyou Kara Maou! on DVD. I also intend to buy Elfen Leid to add to my collection, someday. When I'm a millionaire. Ahem.

( More Mahabharata Icons! )

( Yet another OTP meme, I guess, but it's the first one that I've ever bothered posting. )

And to finish off this post... OMG I'm so excited I get to see imorca on Friday!

Oh, and it feels good to be creatively writing again. I probably won't be able to keep it up once my job in Minneapolis starts in September, but right now, it's nice to get as much of it out of my system as I can.

To-do list for the summer:

• Finish my journal entry and upload pictures from my Wisconsin trip.


• New layout for Temptation.


• New layout for Neko Mamire. Although I want to re-do the text and background colors so that they contrast more.


• New layout for Boyfruit.


• New layout for Covet and Hoard.


• New layout for Tsukuttemiyou.


• New layout/massive content revamp for Telescopic Lens.


• Finish translating the Pichi Pichi Pitch manga.


• New layout and massive content revamp for Starlight Pops.


• New layout for Kinmoku.net.


• New layout for Boukenshin.net.


• Finish writing Mahabharata parody (I'm already up to Hanuman's celebrity cameo during the exile part!). Plus finish some more half-finished (er, half-baked, rather) icons that I have lying around.

Ah, I love summer because I get to work on web dev stuff. 'Course, the first priority is always keeping up with regular site updates (which I almost never do). I already have a ton of fanart and magazine scans backed up for Temptation and PoaDK, respectively. Plus, once those Stars R2 DVDs hit the shelves, I would love to re-do a bunch of video clips and screenshots for Starlight Pops.

( And now I need to do some self-centered whining about my web design complex... )

Edit: Slight update to the to-do list. And **LUFFS** to awesome people who commented.